Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Del.icio.us is interesting. It lendsitself well to the following experiment/analysis: Some tags co-occurwith other tags much more often than others. This creates naturalclusters. For example, "php" and "mysql" are a pair of tags that aremore likely to apply to the same URL than say "philosophy" and "web".So, it's pretty straightforward to analyze the RSS feeds they provideand automatically generate the clusters, so I did it.

(Note, to illustrate some of these clusters I use a stylesheet whichwill not get picked up by most RSS readers, so visit the actual pageif the diagrams make no sense) Most clusters are exactly the kind ofthing you'd expect, though some have interesting structure. Othersare amusing or surprising. One "standard" cluster is essentially aweb development cluster. I've collapsed some of the sub-clusters for clarity:

Politics cluster

rumsfeld iraq

rnc dnc

democrats

political gop

bush

politics

kerry

election fraud

usa

When you get to the somewhat higher level connections (which are that much more tenuous) there are some less obvious arrangements. All caps words represent an entire subcluster that doesn't have its structure shown:

RSS/BLOGGING

LINUX

mail windows

ftp

spam

IETF RFCs

imap email

sputnik darpa

1950s 1960s

INTERNET HISTORY

free reference

snort security

tools

WEB DEVELOPMENT

Some of the odd connections (eg "mail windows" and "ftp") may just be an artifact of the relatively small sample (less than 6000 tagged URLs).I'll have to collect more data and continue the experiment. In any case, it's interesting to me that it exposes a hierarchical ontology in a rather straightforward way.

Sunday, December 5, 2004

Back in 1993, I set up a web server and one of the things I put on it was a gateway to National Weather Service data. In the intervening decade, a great many superior weather services have appeared on the web. I'm not particularly a weather geek, but my early contribution in the area has always made me follow web weather information a little more closely than I might have otherwise.

I was pleased to see recently that the NOAA was providing forecastdata in XML. I was disappointed to see that the query mechanism wasSOAP. Allow me to rant for a moment: SOAP is a bit of an atrocity.SOAP is the "simple object access protocol" which is this abominationin which you tunnel gigantic XML wrapped queries over HTTP in order toaccess various web services. Then, XML documents are returned.Great, I'm all for XML in appropriate places. If you're accessing aweb service that is returning structured data, an XML document isalmost the perfect response. However, an XML query?Why? Why? Ok, I know some of the reasons, but when it comes down toit, they're not very good. Just because you can beat a nail into thewall with the end of a screwdriver doesn't make it the right tool forthe job. If only we had a straightforward method for requesting namedobjects with arbitrary named parameters as a query, right? We do.It's called HTTP and url-encoded form data. So, if I have a reallysimple object "myObject" I want to call "myMethod" on with the namedparameter "myParameter" with a value of "myValue", in SOAP, I have to send:

Both approaches return the exact same data. SOAP, I have to use thirdparty libraries which may be incomplete, poorly documented or buggy.In the latter approach, I can use curl, lynx, wget, any webbrowser, third party libraries or I can hack together a rawsocket implementation in minutes. Some people have taken to callingthis latter approach "REST" which refers to Fielding's"Representational State Transfer". I'm fine with calling it REST ifthe goal is to have a name for it but the real name for it is "theworld wide web". Having a queryable URL which returns XML is great.Having to send it XML in the first place is unnecassary. Emersoncommented: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds."I'm sure this is exactly what he was thinking of. XML is cool, butlet's not over apply it til we get sick of it. WSDL is cool, butlet's just skip section 3 (SOAP binding) and focus on section 4 (HTTPbinding). If you have a strong reason to use SOAP rather thanstraight HTTP, go ahead, but in essentially every case I've ever seen,an HTTP binding would be more than sufficient and vastly superior.Ok, the rant part is over.

So, in an effort to make the world a better place, I made a RESTishHTTP gateway to the NOAA SOAP interface.

The URL is http://mkgray.com:8000/noaaforecast and it take parameters longitude, latitude, product, optionally startTime, optionally endTime and at least one of the weather parameters (maxt, mint, temp, dew, pop12, qpf, snow, sky, wspd, wdir, wx, icons, waveh) if you are using time-series mode. For example, if you wanted to see what was forecast to fall out of the sky near Boston:

If you hit the page too often (more than 30 times in a 6 hour period) you'll be throttled and given 503 errors. If you omit latitude, longitude, product or parameters when required, you'll get a 404. See the NOAA page for details on the format of the inputs (ie, the times) and the format of the returned XML.

We visited the new gigantic Jordan's Furniture in Reading,Massachusetts. Wow, it's big, but lacking in most of the charm of theother Jordan's stores.

I've been reasonably impressed with the other Jordan's stores, eventhe large ones. They are famous for their low-pressure sales approachand quirky stores. They'll have free coffee, cookies, and popcorn.One of them has a motion movie ride. The new store has a 3-d IMAXtheatre, a "trapeze school", a brightly colored illuminated fountain,a Jelly Bellies store and an ice cream stand. Plus, a great deal more.Unfortunately, this has the net feeling of making it feel ratherextremely over-commercialized. It's not that the other stores arenon-commercial feeling; they are retail stores. The new one feels crass rather than quirky though.

To top it all off, despite their overwhelming size, their selection isonly somewhat better. We went looking for entertainment centers. Ifyou want an entertainment center 46" wide and 68" tall, with swing outdoors and drawers underneath, they have a wide range of styles andappearances. You want a narrower one? Well, mostly not. One withoutdoors? No. A taller one with cabinets above? No. The uniformity ofchoice in a smaller store is unsurprising. In a store this large it'sdisappointing.

Thursday, December 2, 2004

JavaScript isn't awful. Well, it isn't awful anymore. WhenJavaScript first came out, freshly renamed from the less misleading"ActiveScript", it was awful. It was ill-defined, clunky, full ofsecurity holes, and awkward in a great many ways. I wrote it off as atool used to make web sites do things they really didn't need to orshouldn't do anyway. At some point, seemingly around 1999, this changed.

JavaScript is a clever language with an interesting twist on the"standard" object model of languages like Java or C++. It's got arelatively clean and useful set of built-in libraries, including thevaluable DOM. It's threading/timing model is a bit bizarre butsurprisingly useful. It interacts with XHTML in powerful ways toenable some very useful bits of web UI. Through the use of"bookmarklets" it puts a lot of power back in the browser which, inthe interest of "interactive" web sites has been gradually leachedaway.

JavaScript still has it's issues. The three biggest as I see it are:

It used to be bad. It really was bad. No DOM. No good documentation. No prototype inheritance model. Bad. First impressions make a big difference.

It's mostly used by non-developers. At some level this isn't bad, but it creates the problem that a lot of the JS code out there is awful because the people writing it don't really know what they're doing. It's horrible voodoo code which is unintelligible and barely functional, never mind maintainable or usable by others.

Most use of JavaScript is abuse. The most ubiquitous applications of JS are things like popup and popunder ads. Even image rollovers and other stupid UI tricks could be called abuse. Modern browsers (eg, Firefox) address the whole popup issue well, making this abuse less apparent. Unfortunately, a tool that is mostly used for bad things is often assumed to be a bad thing. JavaScript was used for a lot of bad things.

Now, though it's a nice language. It's being accepted more bydevelopers. It's being used in useful ways. So, if you're like meand thought JavaScript was an atrocity deserving no attention, lookagain. It's grown up a lot. The question remains: "Why didn't anyonetell me, in the last 5 years, that it was so much better?"

Thursday, November 11, 2004

In response to my October games summary Iain asked where I play so many games.I've been meaning to write an entry that answers that as part of it, so here's that post.

I'm very lucky to live in Boston which has likely the highestconcentration of "German" gamers in the US. Further, I'm lucky inthat non-gamer friends tend to like to play games a lot even if not inthe overall quantities I tend to. Finally, my family (wife, parents,brother, in-laws) all have some interest in playing games. Thiscombination of factors means I get to play a lot of games.

In terms of the particulars, my gaming occurs in a few venues:

Hosted Sessions. Lots of individuals in the greater Boston area hold semi-public sessions on a weekly or monthly basis at their homes. Further, there are a number of private sessions which often have a higher fraction of casual gamers.

Gaming Events. These are periodic public and invitational events like the Unity Games events and the Gathering.

Friends. These aren't so much "sessions" as having frineds over or being out with friends and playing some games.

Family. As I mentioned, my family enjoys playing games. These won't usually be involved sessions, usually 1 or 2 games in an evening.

Before my daughter was born we hosted a monthly private session withusually about 8 people attending, typically half regular gamers andhalf people who don't game outside of my session. I expect we'llresume these at some point.

Of the four categories above, about 40-50% of my gaming is at hosted sessions and 15-20% in each of the other three categories. One friend runs a weekly session at which I play an average of about 3 games so that represents a good fraction of the monthly gaming alone.

Sunday, November 7, 2004

In an analysisby Mark Newman (currently down), he presents some interesting pictures includingsome nice cartograms. His final graph presents a remarkable observation: There are two Americas, but not the two we think. Thereare a small but sizable number of counties (roughly 400) that wentextremely strongly for Kerry and the rest of the counties which wereless polarized to varying degrees. It's a striking result. It's nottrue though.

Upon thinking about this histogram, I couldn't imagine how this couldhappen. Was this some sort of odd gerrymandering? Almost nostatistics on this scale ever show the kind of dramatic "edge". It'snot impossible, just unlikely. I skimmed through the USA Today dataand couldn't find any of the 400 "super-Kerry" counties. So, since Icouldn't find the raw data anywhere, I did what Dr. Newman presumablydid: I collated the data from the href=http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/president.htm>USAToday site. Now, I don't know what tools he used, but I wrote acouple of perl scripts to reformat the data for analysis. I ran itthrough my scripts and I got a very similar result to Dr. Newman's,though not quite the same: 362 counties voted over 98% for Kerry.Wow. So, I decided to look at some of them, since I hadn't been ableto find one before. One of the counties was that of "Cape, NJ". Iwent to the USA Today site to check out this county, to find itdoesn't exist. But, there is a "Cape May, NJ". Aha, there are 362counties in the US with spaces in the names! Further, the balance ofthose between 362 and his 400 is probably due to another data anlysisbug caused by the fact that the numbers have commas in them.

In truth, there are no counties which voted more than 93% for Kerry,never mind 400 which voted over 98% for Kerry, however I might wishthat to be true. There's only one voting region that went over 98%for Bush: Glenwood Pit., ME. Mainereports by town, not by county. There are two people there. They voted for Bush.

I'm sure this was an unintentional error (in fact, according to href=http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/36803>post on MeFi he hadremoved the histogram before the site went down), but I was surprisedat the extent to which it wasn't questioned. Outrageous resultsshouldn't be uniformly dismissed because it's often the outrageousthat's important, but at the same time, it should be greeted with agreater degree of skepticism.

Thursday, November 4, 2004

I recently played a few of the new Essen releases, "Tanz der Hornochsen", "Leapfrog" and "Pompeji". All of them were reasonably good, but none were amazing.

Tanz der Hornochsen. A boardgame (barely) version of "6 nimmt!" It's fun and it's got some good twists above and beyond the basic gameplay, which closely resembles 6 nimmt!,but in the end, I'm not sure it adds that much. What does seem possible is that this may do better with fewer players while the original prefers more like 5 or 6 players. The tiles are a bit annoying compared to cards and the whole aspect of everyone having the option to buy cards before each turn really messes up the pacing. Fun, but I may mostly stick to 6 nimmt!, and I'm usually a big fan of novelty.

Leapfrog. A light little "race" game. It's not really a race game in the traditional sense, more of a second-guessing/simultaneous-selection game. Light, cute fun. It plays quite fast as well.

Pompeji. A game with a lot of luck, but a really nice bit of gameplay which involves running from the erupting volcano. Certainly not the deepest game, but there are interesting tactical choices and even some strategic planning. Some of the turn timing seems to introduce more luck than is warranted though. Running from a volcano is entertaining.

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

A leader of great charisma rose rapidly through the ranks, and despite not getting a majority of the vote, became the leader of the country. He had a checkered past, but was a man of strong character. Shortly after coming to power, a major national landmark, an important building, was destroyed. The attack was perpetrated not by another nation, but by a group who's ideology went against the very spirit of the nation. Unfortunately, this attack was used as a basis for instituting laws and policies which heavily restricted civil rights and went against fundamental rights granted in the constitution. The attack also united the nation with a strong national pride. This charismatic leader went on to engage in unprovoked invasions of multiple countries and large portions of the rest of the world strongly opposed his actions. From there, things got far far worse.

The history I'm talking about is of course that of Germany in the 1930s, the rise of Hitler, the burning of the Reichstag by the communists, the Enabling Act and subsequent invasions that are part of the much more well known history. I've never been a big fan of history, but it seems imporant to know. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. -- George Santayana

I recently played Lost Valley for the second time. Unfortunately, I have to report that my earlier impression was correct. It's nicely produced and if you really like exploration games, you could get into it, butit is rather mechanical and nothing exciting. None of the mechanics really combine in interesting ways. You just do it and there's not a lot of fun, strategy or tactics. It is beatifully produced though.

Goldbrau, on the other hand, was quite good despite playing with three (I hear it is better with four) and getting one rule wrong for 2/3 of the game. I expect with four and the correct rules it would be very good. It combineselements I like (business game, simultaneous action selection) with some clever mechanics (the brewery/beergarden split, the boss mechanic) along with being generally well crafted. It is a little fiddly and isn't perfect, butit's quite good.

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Semantic markup is the new big thing, the semantic web and all that. I see it less as a cool new thing and more of a returning to our roots,or at least the roots of the web as I saw them when it first started in the early 90s.

Back in the early days of the web (1993), I had a mantra I used when explaining HTML markup to people "Semantic, not Literal". That is, an html H1 tag does not mean "bigger font". It means "1st level heading". HTML markup was meant to be semantic, and not for any aesthetic reason. It wasn't even for the reason of browser independence (though, had people stuck to semantic markup, this whole WML thing would have been simpler). It was for the reason that semantic markup is much more powerful from an information access point of view. Specifying a font color is nice, but it came at a cost of semantic ambiguity. Of course, HTML was never really fully semantic markup, it was just an appealing dream. People fell in love with the FONT tag and a variety of other literal markup tags and mechanisms. The hope for semantic markup was lost, and HTML became very much a literal presentation markup language.

Then, to add insult to injury, things like DHTML came along, flaunting the fact that HTML had become a presentation markup language, not a semantic markup language. I resisted learning DHTML for a while because of this. Once you give in and accept HTML as a presentation language, DHTML is sort of neat. When I first learned about CSS, I had some hope that perhaps it restored some of that semantic markup quality. Sadly, it did not. It does do a decent job of abstracting out "style", but HTML is still essentially purely presentational. CSS allows it to presented in a variety of styles, though, and it's nice having a relatively universal standard for those style details.

But looking at the web now, the power of semantic markup is winning out again. href=http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html>RSS has become an extremely rapidly growing and popular scheme for information delivery. RSS is a pure semantic markup with all the presentation details left up to HTML. I currently read well over 100 RSS feeds, only a fraction of which are from blogs which prompted the success of RSS. This blog itself is accessible via RSS and many of the readers access it that way. I read the comics, the Times, a grab bag of web sites, a few search engine queries, and even a mailing list, all via RSS. It's very gratifying to see "semantic, not literal" finally getting a lot of traction.

Two other random thoughts on RSS: I expect it won't be long before some RSS feeds start including advertising entries. It surprises me I haven't really seen them yet. I just hope when the time comes it isn't overwhelming. There are some feeds I would keep reading even with a reasonable dose of ads. Most, however, I'd stop reading if ads started being included. Until then, it's a nice little garden. The other thought is that blogs, as the progenitor of RSS, share other qualities with the early days of the web. In the early days of the web, the thing to do was have your own personal homepage you created. Rapidly, as most people had nothing they wanted to put on such a page, having a homepage became something that while many people had them, it was more commonly something a university or corporation had, not an individual. Further, in the early days of the web, the goal (as much as there was a "goal") was to share information. You weren't trying to drive banner hits, collect demographic data or derive revenue. While some (many?) blog writers may now have those goals, the biggest goal I've observed is wanting to be read. RSS is a great way to make it easier to be read.

(Footnote: If you're looking for a great way to read RSS feeds, there are a variety of href=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=rss%20aggregator&btnG=Google+Search>RSS aggregator applications, but I will highly recommend Bloglines as an outstanding web based reader.)

Thursday, October 14, 2004

My wife and I looked around to try to find a parenting group in Somerville, with little success initially. Then, one day we were downtown Boston with the baby and a stranger in the elevator struck up a conversation, asking how old our baby was and whatnot. She asked where we lived and when my wife said Somerville, she said "Oh, I was in a great new mothers group in Somerville!". So, she sent us the info and now my wife has been going to this group.

Apparently though, they don't have much of a web presence, but they want to at least be findable by google, which is part of the reason for me to post here about it. They have a members-only Yahoo Group: Somerville Moms, but it's hard to find. They meet on Thursdays in Somerville. So, if you're looking for Somerville parents group, parenting group, mothers group or mom's group, hopefully you'll find this. They also have support groups in Arlington, Brookline, Cambridge, Jamaica Plain, Medford, Newton, Stoughton, Watertown, and Westwood. Their info number is 617-614-1967. I hope this entry helps other folks find these groups.

The same organization that runs these groups also runs a fathers' support group, but only in Newton. Anyone know of a fathers' group in the Somerville, Cambridge, or Medford area?

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Well, my server finally died. It has served well for over 5 years,but some combination of problems including some sort of disk problemcaused it to finally give up the ghost. I finally got a new serverand am in the process of restoring everything to its former glory. Alot of stuff doesn't work, and I'll post here when everything is back.At the moment, all the static content (myhomepage, miscellaneous other pages) is back, this blog is back,but all dynamic content (the BGRS,RGBRollcall, Game store database, Heroscape unit generator, etc.) isdown. I hope to have it back soon. If you notice any errors withaspects of the site that I list as "back up", pleaselet me know.

Thursday, October 7, 2004

I wrote briefly about Heroscapeearlier, but its worth writing more. Heroscape is fundamentally aminiatures game. I don't usually like miniatures games. They'relogistically annoying to play, lacking in good ways to keep track ofthings like which units have moved already, sometimes requiringrulers, frustrating rules about base contact and various other things.Further, they tend to be really really complicated with lots of rulesaimed at enhancing the simulation, rather than enhancing the game.Finally, a lot of them expect you to paint miniatures. Many peopleenjoy that, but I don't have the time, patience or interest.Heroscape manages to be different. I'll discuss the specific ways itavoids these problems at the end.

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Overall, this is a very good game. It's biggest "flaw" is that ithas a lot of luck. If substantial amount of luck bothers you, thisgame is definitely right out. Despite that, it also has a lot ofstrategy and tactics. It also has a lot of bits. It also has a lotof opportunities for variation. It also has a lot of skill. It's gota lot of themes. It's got a lot of fun. It's got a lot of luck.It's got a lot of everything. Some might ask how a game can have botha great deal of skill and a lot of luck. In other places atheoretical game "ChessDice" has been suggested to explain such anidea. In "ChessDice", two people play a game of chess. Then, eachrolls a six-sided die. The winner of the chess game adds one to theirroll. The higher roll wins. This is a rather silly game, but it'sgot a lot of luck and a lot of skill. Heroscape is much the same way;it's got a lot of skill, but there's so much luck that it only makes amoderate impact. Unlike ChessDice, Heroscape is fun.

Another quality Heroscape had that some will enjoy and others won't isthe thematic dissonance. It can be very engaging in a geeky sort ofway to get into the idea of Vikings vs. Robots, for example. On theother hand, some may find this a barrier to being engaged in thetheme. It doesn't do it for everybody. For that matter, it has aviolent theme; most scenarios have a goal of "defeat all of youropponents units". At least it isn't collectible. (It is "expandable")

Enough with all the qualifications as to why some will not like it.It's a really good game. The components are stunningly good. Theyare beautiful, integrate well with the gameplay, are great little toysand are complete. The provided unit cards address are well designedand clear. The terrain is outstanding. The scenarios are fun andclearly playtested. The initial army draft provides for a variety ofinteresting strategic options. The units abilities are well balancedand interesting. The complexity is close to what I'd consideroptimal. It's complex enough to be interesting but simple enough toplay quickly and cleanly.

The game is not collectible, but it is expandable. Further, becausethey used standard miniature sizes, many have suggested usingminiatures from other games to use with Heroscape. I created theHeroscapeUnitCreator with this in mind. All the same, I've only sofar played with the standard units and they provide a rich andcomplete gaming experience which I don't feel will be exhausted anytime soon. I'm sure sometime I'll enjoy adding figures, but for nowthere are enough interesting combinations of the provided units for itto be very compelling. Further, the scenarios (both included, anddownloadable from the web site)provide some interesting and well tested variations such as fog, acidmist and mud.

The game succeeds by keeping the core of the game simple. The specialpowers of each unit add a richness that prevents it from gettingtedious. The terrain system adds an understandable but deep set oftactical options. And yet, they've done a very good job of leaving alot of things out. There are no "cover" rules, you either have lineof sight or not. There are never any penalties, only bonuses. Thereis no facing. There are no squad coherence rules. There is only onekind of damage. No unit has special powers that have to be looked upanywhere other than on their card. Terrain and range don't interact.Being one step higher than an opponent is just as good as being twosteps higher. Any number of rules could be argued for on simulationgrounds, but they've done a good job of picking a set that makes for agood game. In the end the rules they picked make for interesting andfun tactics.

The "ergonomics" is also very good. Something as simple as the unitcards and the turn markers solves many of the bookkeeping problemsassociated with miniature games. The "thematic dissonance" Imentioned makes the units easily distinguishable in general. Yes,there's three different Viking groups, but imagine if the game wereall Vikings. The hex based terrain allows attractive and interestinglayouts with simple and unambiguous movement and range measurements.Line-of-sight is the only aspect that could even be vaguely debatable,and I've found it easiest to just play "when in doubt, yes, you haveLoS".

As a great many people have pointed out, the components are simplyamazing. The miniatures are beautifully sculpted and painted. Theterrain is attractive and durable. The cards and other miscellaneouscomponents are nicely produced. Finally, all of this is produced foran emminently reasonable price.

In the end, this is certainly the best miniatures game I've everplayed. It's not the deepest but it is the most attractive, most welldesigned and most fun. If the qualifications above (lots of luck,thematic dissonance, fighting game) don't turn you off, you're likelyto enjoy Heroscape.

To tie together two previous entries: I wrote aboutfactcheck.org a while ago, long beforeDick Cheney's near mention of it in the debates made itfamous. I also recently wrote about knowing my audience. On FactCheck, however, while I got the URL right, I mistyped the text ofthe link as "FackCheck.org". No big deal, the link leads to the rightplace, and I just feel a little silly for such an odd spelling error.

But, it turns out other people have heard about factcheck.org, butmisheard as "fackcheck". Fackcheck.org doesn't exist, so whatdo they do? Search Google for href=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=fackcheck&btnG=Google+Search>fackcheck.Link #3, my site. So, this week I've gotten a moderate number ofvisitors who came to my site by searching for "fackcheck". Welcome,whether you're here looking for fackcheck.org, fackcheck.com,fact-check, fack-check, fack check or whatever.

The real site is factcheck.organd I highly recommend it. Cheney mentioned factcheck.com, whichsomeone (not Soros) set up to point to George Soros' web site. Thefunny twist beyond the URL error is of course that Cheney was claimingthat factcheck.org defended his record at Halliburton which it doesnot do. While Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, they did a great deal ofbusiness (through subsidiaries) with enemies of the United States.What factcheck.org does say is that the Democratic accusations ofimproprieties regarding granting Halliburton military contracts areoverblown. Inappropriate granting of contracts to Halliburton:overblown. Doing business with enemies of the USA: well, yes.Spelling errors: in the age of google, they sometimes help people findwhat they're looking for.

Tuesday, October 5, 2004

Slightly echoing my earlier comments on Fahrenheit911, it's a surreal world when the Democratic VP candidate is the one compellingly arguing for tax cuts,defecit reduction and fiscal responsibility. Andrew Sullivan has an interesting article from several monthsago which expresses some similar sentiments. Now, we have a Republican administration and legislature leading the largest expansion of the federal government in decades. It's ratherodd.

Given that the debates aren't really debates (eg, the debaters are actually prohibited from directing questions at one another), I've been pleased and impressed at the level of discourse. There's been some real substance there, and I think it managed to highlight some of the key issues that have concerned me. One of Kerry's quotesthat I thought well summarized the issue: "It's one thing to be certain, but you can be certain and be wrong. Certainty sometimes can get you in trouble." Afriend who grew up in Germany wondered aloud why Bush's attributes of being "resolute", "steadfast", and "determined" are considered a good thing. He observed Germany had leadership with all of those qualities in the 1940s. Being resolute and certain isn't inherently good.

I'd support Kerry over Bush on social policy grounds anyway, but I find the unflinching confidence of an administration who has been in power through torture,secret tribunals, an unprovoked war, institution of secret laws,censorshipand increased limits on civil liberties to be extremely distressing.Their certainty has gotten us into bigtroubleinIraq, and I'm afraid of where more might lead. 9/11 changeda lot of things, but it shouldn't be a carte blanche for the disaster we've been lead through since then.

Monday, October 4, 2004

Saturday was Unity Games8, which was a lot of fun. I played several old favorites (Ra,Crokinole, Compatability) and several "new favorites" (Heroscape,Einfach Genial, San Juan) and a handful of new-to-me games, which I thoughI'd record impressions of here:

Rumis: Pueblo-like game of building using 3dimensional blocks. It scores differently, in fact nearly oppositeand the gameplay is somewhat different (your pieces must touch yourother pieces). Overall, its good, perhaps has good or better thenPueblo. Plus, it comes with a nice "Lazy Susan" style board whichPueblo would benefit from.

Victory & Honor: Very good trick taking game. In fact, one of the best new ones I've played in awhile. The twist in this one is that you play three tricks ("left","center" and "right") at a time. If you play a card to your "left"trick, your left hand opponent must play the next card. It's a littlecomplicated to wrap a strategy around at first, but it's a lot of funand very interesting. Clever.

Betrayal at the House on the Hill: This new AvalonHill game is a lot of theme, which didn't really engage me, and only avery little game. It's a sort of neat idea, but not especially andthe execution is mediocre. The components are nice, and there aresome creative ideas, but I didn't see much I really thought was compelling.

Friday, October 1, 2004

While fatherhood has induced an increased bias toward shorter games, I actually got to play a bunch of games this month. For various reasons, I also have some slightly more in depth comments this month than usual.

39 games played, 17 titles, (3 new to me) over 10 sessions with 20 different people.

Hot Games for September, 2004

Heroscape (9 plays)

I'm writing a more complete review which I will post soon, but it's certainly the big hit recently. I'm not 100% sure why I'm as enchanted by this game that at many levels is rather frivolous, but I'll try to deconstruct that a little bit in my review. Suffice to say, it's been a lot of fun

Ok, this one deserves explanation. I am not a fan of "collectible" games, by which I mean those with artificial rarities and random contents packages. I'm fine with "expandable" games, like the above Heroscape, or RoboRally, or Carcassone, but the random aspect bothers me as a consumer. Years ago, I played Magic to see what all the hooplah was about. It was fun, not amazing, but fun. A friend and I decided we weren't interested in diving into the money-draining pit of collecting, but if we each bought a bunch (about $40 worth) of cards, we could play together and it would be fun. It was, a little. Unfortunately, $40 worth of cards doesn't really give you a great deal of deck building flexibility. So, we played some and I largely abandoned it. Recently, another friend dove in head first and has a great many cards including many of the pre-constructed "theme decks", which we used in the 5 games I played. That works better as a game. It was fun with interesting gameplay, albeit quite a bit of luck. It seems like deck construction makes for a very interesting game, but to truly have all the options available to you, you need 4 copies of each card to choose from. That's expensive and impractical. A few games were fun, but for the few hundred dollars worth of cards it would take to make the deck building options feel reasonable, I'd rather have a bunch more German games.

Maharaja (1 play)

This is good. Nothing stunningly brilliant, but not totally unoriginal either. It's got several nice interlocking mechanisms and seemingly several paths to victory. It's not as good as I hoped it would be, but it is much better than I feared it might be.

Phoenix (3 plays)

Quick and entertaining two-player game which is more fun than it seems like it should be given it's simplicity and straightforwardness.

Einfach Genial (2 plays)

I need to play this more before I have a sense as to whether there any genuinely deep strategy or tactics options, but its engaging enough even before such depth (or lack thereof) is apparent.

I think the first time I played this, I may have played with the wrong rules. It's better with the right rules, or at least its better with the expansion deck I played with than with the built in decks.

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

My company, Newbury Networks is seeking applicants for a number ofpositions. These positions include Professional Services, QAEngineers, Sales Engineers, Sales Account Executives and SoftwareEngineers. All of these, except the developer positions, are href=http://www.newburynetworks.com/company/career.php>described onthe web site. The developer position description should be postedsoon. All positions are in Boston except for the Sales Exec and SalesEngineer where we're looking for someone on the west coast.

For the developer position, we're looking for experienced Javadevelopers where experience in J2EE, wireless networks, security,embedded systems and UI design are all valuable.

For those who don't know, href=http://www.newburynetworks.com>Newbury Networks is a wirelesssecurity company providing physical perimeter security for 802.11based networks. Feel free to email me (matthew@gray.org) with aresume or just submit it to the address on our web site.

Sunday, September 12, 2004

Wow, Heroscape (official site, fan site) is an amazing toy and a rather fun game. It's pretty much a miniatures game, which I usually find appealing, but not actually enjoyable. This succeeds at being both rich in gameplay and simple. The terrain and corresponding rules are outstanding. Plus, it is an amazing amount of toy bits. It's a blast. There's something very geeky but very entertaining about a game coming down to a battle between a Viking and a robot.

Sunday, September 5, 2004

Typo is "6 nimmt!" meets "Ghost". It is a new small card game fromCwali. If you're familiar with the word game Ghost and Kramer's 6nimmt!, it is rather obviously a direct mixture. If you're not, theCwali website has agood description of play. I'm a big fan of 6 nimmt!, enjoy word gamesin general, and have enjoyed Cwali's products in the past so I waseager to give this one a try.

I like it, and it seems to do well with different numbers of players.I've played with 2, 3 and 5 and it worked well in each number. Theplay isn't quite as quick as 6 nimmt!, but unless players areexceedingly pensive, it moves along fairly well. Unlike many wordgames, it feels a bit more luck driven than is typical, but notoverwhelmingly so. With more players, the luck seems to spread out abit more evenly, while with two, one person can get a lot of bad cardsand be more hurt by that than they would be with more players.

I've seen other comments that point out that this game may morestrongly require evenly matched players, and I'm inclined to agree. Idon't think it's as strong a requirement as it may initially seem,however. Certainly, playing with children may not work, and a broadervocabulary will benefit a player, but not so much as to preventenjoyment of the game by others.

Like other word games, I imagine Typo would heavily reward studying ofword lists, especially the thorough learning of unusual 3 letterstarts to words. It's quite entertaining without such preparation,naturally.

Overall, I really like it. It's got a good amount of luck and has agood playing length (30 minutes) for its depth. Further, it is nicelyproduced and is extremely compact, which to me is a very positivefeature. Recommended, especially if you like word games and wouldn'tbe put off by a fair bit of luck in it.

Thursday, September 2, 2004

Cabot "Hot Habanero Cheddar" is really good. It's actuallyquite spicy and rather tasty. I've had other spicy cheeses,particularly various varieties of Jalapeno Jack, which are all welland good, but none nearly as flavorful as this. I've found it locallyat both Shaw's/Star and BJs Wholesale.

Wednesday, September 1, 2004

As expected becoming a father causes a substantial slowdown in game playing. It's worth it, though.Shockingly enough, I did play some games this month with family and friends while Genevieve slept (sometimes).

11 games played, 7 titles (0 new to me) over 5 sessions with 5 different people.

Monday, August 30, 2004

I've been a Linux user for over a decade now. Before that, Iused the C64, GEOS, MacOS (before it was called that), but I've neverreally used Windows for any period of time by choice. On severaloccasions over the past decade I decided to give Windows a try again,usually in a dual boot configuration. Each time it didn't last longand I was promptly back to using Linux exclusively. Windows simplylacked the customizability, the transparency, the power, and theconvenience of a Linux system. More recently, href=http://www.cygwin.com>Cygwin and less crash-inclined releasesof Windows have made my required occasional use of Windows tolerable,but no reason to use it by choice. When it comes down to it, Idecided I was just set on Linux and to some extent it wouldn't matterhow good an alternative was, I was set in my ways.

Then, because we were having a baby, we decided to get a video cameraand come up with a solution for doing video editing. I had seeniMovie and been impressed with the apparent power and simplicity.That, combined with having heard some good things about OS X and beingcomfortable with its unix foundation, made us decide to get a Mac. Iknow there's some good video editing stuff for Linux, but I'm not yetcomfortable with the maturity of that subsection of the linuxapplication base. So, a few months ago, we bought a 17" PowerBook.

Initially, I was reasonably happy with the PowerBook and MacOS.Click-to-focus still annoyed me and it took me a while to learn tolike Expose, but it was ok. For the purpose we bought it for, videoediting, it excelled. Both iMovie and iDVD are outstanding pieces ofsoftware for doing what I want to do. I'm sure if I got moreinterested in doing really elaborate productions, I might prefer amore sophisticated system like Final Cut, but I'm pretty happy withiMovie for now.

So, I've continued to use the Mac for almost 4 months, and I've got toadmit, I'm a convert. It manages to pretty cleanly integrate theconvenience of a casual use GUI with the transparency, accessibilityand power of unix. It's not just that if you drag a file into aterminal window, it expands to the fully escaped pathname. It's notjust that it ships with perl. Those are nice, but what really does itthat most of the apps seem to store things in open or obvious ways.iTunes puts a bunch of mp3s in a transparent directory hierarchy. iCaluses vCalendar. Mail uses a bunch of mboxes. Address Book, well, itlets you export to vCards.

That said, the included apps are all of sufficiently high quality thatI haven't felt as great a need, as I often do, to fiddle with them.Mail's junk filtering is great, and it's filtering rules setup iscleaner than most. iMovie continues to please, as does iTunes.iPhoto is even pretty cool although it doesn't handle large librariesgracefully at all. In fact what really has me converted is the DWIMfactor. (DWIM == Do What I Mean) Linux and Windows both have had theproblem for me that they wouldn't do what I meant. With Linux, I havesufficient access and transparency that I can force it to DWIM. OS Xcomes pretty close to DWIM most of the time, and I can force it on therare occasion that it misbehaves (for example, creating severalsmaller iPhoto libraries).

I still rely on my Linux server, so I'm not a complete convert, butthe PowerBook is pretty sweet.

Sunday, August 22, 2004

Some time ago, Angela Gaalema gave us a sleeveless Plenary Gamesshirt. The shirt is lovely, but at XXL, rather excessively large oneither me or my wife. Recently, my wife happened to throw it on anddiscover that by virtue of it being sleeveless and very large, thesides open up conveniently, making it a reasonably effective nursingtop for feeding Genevieve.

But, the good news doesn't end there. On various occasions,especially when being changed, Genevieve will stare rather intently(and calmly) at the Plenary Games logo. They say infants like highcontrast black and white and the Plenary Game logo has that, but Iinstead take it as a sign of interest and we'll see if I can get herto play a game of Fresh Fish before she's out of diapers.

Saturday, August 21, 2004

Recently, I've had several occasions to play "Mississippi", agame from the late 1980's published by Mattel. It's not the greatestgame in the world, but it is a very good race/puzzle game. Given thatit was published in 1987, before the deluge of quality games from thepast decade, it is especially remarkable and worthy of a bit morenotoriety.

The basic mechanics are simple: pay logs to move forward or receivelogs for moving backward. If your boat ends up adjacent to another,you may end up getting a push forward, or they may, depending on theorientation of your pieces. This bumping is the core mechanic of thegame and some involved chain reactions may be produced.

The game play can feel a little dry, but not overly so, especiallygiven the kind of game it is. The components are nice, but nothingremarkable, with the one flaw that some of the pieces are hard todistinguish colors, occasionally leading to confusion. The wholething plays in 45 minutes, which feels about right.

Overall, it's fun and stands up well to today's more demandingstandards. Recommended, particularly if you like abstract,puzzle-like race games.

Monday, August 16, 2004

Genevieve is usally pretty good about being consolable.That is, she'll be upset at times and need something, but we canusually pretty rapidly figure it out. This evening, however, thisdidn't seem to be the case. We fed her, changed her, swaddled her,rocked her, talked to her and held her in various ways, with only verylimited success.

I had read that babies like white noise, particularly loud whitenoise. So, as an experiment, I opened upAudacity, told it to generate somewhitenoise, set the volume on the laptop to maximum and hit play.Within 10 seconds, she was entranced. Still wide awake, but entrancedand quiet. Despite having read about babies' penchant for loud whitenoise, I was rather surprised. Try it sometime for yourself. Reallyloud white noise is quite annoying. However, half an hour later,she's now asleep in my lap as I type this, with rather irritatingwhite noise blasting out of the laptop.

Thursday, August 12, 2004

A couple of weeks ago, we finally got around to going toAntonia's in Davis Square. It's a teeny Italian place which hasapparently recently changed hands. They were unusually busy for aSunday night (or so they implied) and it took them longer thanexpected to seat us. The ambiance and decor were nice, and the airconditioning mostly managed to keep up.

We started out with a couple of appetizers, an eggplant dish and thejalapeno raviolis. Both dishes were good, though I wished thejalapeno raviolis had been a bit spicier. There was the hint ofjalapeno flavor and a good garlic flavor, but not anything I'd callspicy. The eggplant appetizer was quite good as well.

For dinner, I had the Gnocchi Carbonara which was outstanding.Wonderful gnocchi with an exceptionally done carbonara sauce. Theymanaged to strike an impressive balance; cream based sauces so oftenseem to be too heavy or too mild and this amnaged to find a delicioussavory "sweet spot". The Fettucini Alfredo, on the other hand, fellsolidly on the too mild side of things. It was entirely pasable, justa bit on the bland side. Next time I think we'll be getting twognocchi dishes.

The prices were quite reasonable and the service was polite andhelpful, if a bit slow and occasionally seeming to have difficultyunderstanding English. The view into Davis Square adds to theambiance and let's you stop at JP Licks for ice cream afterwards.Overall, definitely recommended, if you get the gnocchi and avoid thefettucini.

Monday, July 26, 2004

I mentioned Piattini in mypost about Back Bay Restaurants, but itdeserves it's own full review. In many ways, Piattini is a conceptualcousin to tapas, or perhaps even closer to a restaurant likeCuchi Cuchi. While they have traditional entrees,their recommended approach is to get several small appetizer sizeddishes they call piattini.

All of the dishes I've tried there have been quite good and some arereally exceptional. They have a squash ravioli which is a bit sweetand absolutely delicious, as well as a tasty tortellini dish. Ihaven't recently sampled their entrees, but when I did in the past,they were exceptional particularly the filet they had on a seasonalmenu on one lucky occasion. For a typical appetite I'd recommendabout 2 piattini per person, where they are large enough to share withtwo, or perhaps three people, but certainly not more.

They actually call themselves a "wine cafe", but I must admit, Ihaven't really sampled their wines much, but what I have had has beenquite good. Their decor is rather nice, and they have limited, butpleasant outdoor seating, though naturally on a nice evening thatfills up quickly.

It's also worth mentioning that their sandwiches for lunch are quitegood and rather reasonably priced given they are on Newbury Street.Overall, highly recommended, especially for dinner.

Sunday, July 25, 2004

Back in the early days of the web, I was in the news a lot. It wasrather cool. Well, this week, due in part to the DNC here in Boston,I'm in the news a lot again. It's still neat. Here are the mentions:

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Years ago, someone told me that the reason why variousconsumer goods seem to be color coordinated is because there exists agroup that periodically decides what the new colors will be. Thatway, when you buy dish towels, they have some hope of matching yourmixer, which can match your throw rug, which can match your curtains.

Well, I finally got around to looking up this "color cabal", and it'scalled the "Color MarketingGroup" and they annually put out a list of new "Consumer Colors".On their web site, you don't get to actually see the colors, but youcan read about "Eureka: A yellow targeted at a youthful audience","Oxygen: ...this breath of fresh air is an aquatic blue-greeninfluenced by silver", and "Orsando: Sand-inspired brown, ... you wantto wiggle your toes in it". href=http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/005397.html>Othershave written about this group as well.

There's something very amusing about a relatively quiet industryorganization having such a dramatic impact on the color of more orless everything.

Sunday, July 11, 2004

Prior to the late 1990s, this restaurant with a view was owned byStouffer's and the food was correspondingly unsurprising. Sometime inthe late 90s, it changed hands and now the quality of the food matchesthe quality of the view. (The "Top of the Hub" is on the 52nd floorof the Prudential building, providing a stunning view of the Bostonarea)

This evening, we went and had an outstanding meal. We ordered theArugula Salad (a regular favorite), the Avocoado Soup, the VegetarianLasagna and the Beef Tenderloin. As I ordered the beef, an amusinginteraction occured. I said to our server, "I'd like the BeefTenderloin, cooked rare." He looked at me funny and said, "How aboutMedium Well?" I must have returned a rather shocked look, because hecontinued: "To preserve some of the flavor". At this point I realizedhe must have misheard me and I clarified that I wanted it Rare, atwhich point he seemed much relieved. The meal arrived quitedeliciously rare. In fact, all of the food was wonderful. We atearound sunset which provides a spectacular view of Boston both in thelight and in the dark, both of which are worth seeing.

As one would expect, it's a bit pricy, but not unreasonably so. Theyeven had a tasting menu (which we did not opt for) which included awide range of dishes for $65 a person or somewhat more with wine.Overall, highly recommended.

Sunday, July 4, 2004

June was another slow month for games, with a great many otherpriorities surpassing game playing. I will soon be redefining whatconstitutes a "slow" month. Fortunately, I did get to play several longer games.

24 games played, 17 titles (1 new to me) over 7 sessions with 22 different people.

Hot Games for June, 2004

Goa

I am extremely fond of this game. I liked Traders of Genoa, also by Rudiger Dorn, but this is even better. It's got interesting auctions, a complex but manageable system of interlocking bits and a variety of paths to victory. It seems to be a bit north of two hours, and I hope that gets lower with experience, but I really don't usually mind.

Power Grid

I was never a huge fan of Funkenschlag, but Power Grid manages to fix the two "problems" it had: components and length. It's still not short, but it's an outstanding business game.

Friday, July 2, 2004

A week ago, I saw Fahrenheit 9/11. It was very good. And, for allthe lead up hype about how it was "propaganda" and what not, I foundit very honest. Further, most of the griping reviews I've read aboutit fail to cite anything in it that's actually misleading. Onearticle had the odd twist of claiming the movie made some (genuinely)fallacious claims that did not actually appear in the movie. Odd.

In any case, the other comment I've heard repeatedly is that itsomehow is "not a documentary" because it has an opinion. Give me abreak. Documentaries express opinions. If a documentary were simplya recitation of facts, who would want to go see them? A documentaryshouldn't contain lies (and F911 doesn't seem to), but presentingthose facts in support of an opinion or view strikes me as the wholepoint. Fahrenheit 9/11 makes a compelling case for its opinion and isworth seeing whether you agree with Mr. Moore's politics or not.

The final thing that struk me, having seen this movie, is how hard itmust be to be a conservative right now. I've traditionally thought ofconservative politics in terms of certain principles: fiscalrestraint, small government is good government, states rights,Constitutional conservativism, supporting capitalism, moderateisolationism, and an array of similar ideas. Today, there are nomajor options that support these ideals. Kerry certainly representsthe more liberal view, but Bush is no better. He's dramaticallyincreased the size of government, exercised little fiscal restraint,advocated Constitutional amendments to limit states' rights, gotteninvolved in a very messy war and overall acted in opposition to agreat many "conservative" values. It must be hard to be aconservative. There's something very strange about living in a worldwhere the president under whom the budget was balanced, under whomwelfare was reformed and under whom business most flourished was the"liberal".

Sunday, June 27, 2004

This game has a really clever mechanic. Usually, for me, that'senough to make me really enjoy a game. With Alexandros, this isunfortunately not the case. It's an area influence game, which isn'tmy favorite genre, but that's not my main problem with it. It isn't abad game, it just isn't good enough.

The really clever mechanic is that the boundaries between the areas ofinterest and influence are determined by Alexandros moving aroundwhere he moves in (roughly) straight lines on a triangular grid, onesegment per player turn. It's neat. The rest of the game is arelatively standard area control and cardplay game, but well crafted.The components are nice and attractively produced.

The problem I observed is that it's easy for someone to fall badlybehind, and worse, it's easy to play unintentional kingmaker. I'veonly played it twice (which will probably be about it), but it evenseems it may be a bit difficult for someone to notaccidentally make a bit of kingmaking move. I understand anymulti-player game is going to have a bit of kingmaking potentially,but Alexandros seems to have it a bit more than I enjoy. Further, theonly way around this is for players to consistently gang up on theleader(s), which happens naturally, but it's frustrating as afundamental game requirement. Finally, the luck of the cards isn'toverwhelming, but it is sufficient it can stymie attempts to hit theleader even when that's the obvous correct move.

Overall, it's a nice set of mechanics, including one novel and cleverbit, but which falls victim to a few standard problems. The game isfun, but the novelty is not so engaging as to distract from theproblems. In both games I've played, the problems rapidly outweighedthe fun. Not recommended, but not so bad as to not be worth a try. Rating: C

Sunday, June 20, 2004

I tend not to use this site for the usual blogging purpose of listing"cool links" and whatnot. There's already a great many sites that dothis far better than I ever could and there's only a limited value inre-citing useful links.

There are, however, two sites I've been reading regularly for manymonths and feel they're unusually valuable and often unknown:

FackCheck.org is asite run by an independent non-partisan group funded by the AnnenbergFoundation. Basically, they analyze political advertising and writedetailed response papers indicating what claims are true, false,exaggerated, incomplete or otherwise in need of clarification.

Footnote TV is a sitewhich outstandingly cites references to news and issues addressed invarious television programs, particularly "The Daily Show" and "TheWest Wing".

Saturday, June 19, 2004

To me, one of the more interesting problems of recent times is that ofso-called "intellectual property" by which people mean copyrightedworks, patented inventions, trademarked terms and a variety of otherpieces of information. Calling it "Intellectual Property" is reallyan awful name given that it lacks most of the qualities usuallyassociated with "property". It's non-rivalrous, in that I can have itand give it to you and in no way diminish the extent to which I haveit. It's possible for two people to both have it without knowing itor even ever having come in contact, in the case of simultaneousinventions or works. It has zero marginal cost to produce "copies".The list goes on. It's not really property.

While I was in college, I was first exposed to the whole idea of "freesoftware" and later, "open source". These are very compelling modelsfor software and I use and contribute to such projects regularly.However, I started a proprietary software company, I hold a patent, Iwrote a copyrighted book, and don't have a problem with the idea ofproprietary software or other works as a governmentally granted right.I have a great deal of respect for the ideals of folks like RichardStallman, but I think a world in which all software was copyleftedwould have some incentive issues.

As a producer of creative works I recognize the value of a "creativecommons", as described by folks like Lawrence Lessig and welldiscussed in a recent pieceon DRM by Cory Doctorow. I also see the value in protection ofworks as an incentive. While it is true that a great many works wouldbe created even without the ability to legally prevent copying andredistribution, many would not. As has been pointed out by many, thiswould still be the case even if the duration of the rights weredramatically reduced.

If copyright were a "mere" 10 years, I can't imagine many works wouldgo unproduced as a result. Blockbuster movies certainly wouldn't beshied away from. Most books don't stay in print that long. Muchsoftware is useless after that long. And yet, every decade or twothere's a court case to extend the duration of copyright.

Patents seem to be a somewhat different case. Reducing the durationof patent protection would probably have limited impact on softwareinventions but could substantially deter more costly innovation suchas pharmaceutical development. Given that patents are individuallyinspected and evaluated anyway, it seems natural that the patentoffice could assign a term for a patent on a case-by-case basis.

It's a real shame that the recent case opposing to the copyrightextension didn't succeed. I fully believe copyright and patents areimportant to encouraging innovation, but much shorter durations wouldbe a real societal benefit without be a substantial deterrent to suchinnovation.

Thursday, June 17, 2004

I played Power Grid with 2 players for the first time. I liked it.It definitely feels a bit different than the multi-player version, butit's still quite good. The auctions are quite different, and thecompetition for cities is not relevant starting in Step 2, but thequality of someone needing to occupy all the cities to end the game isvery appealing. While I'm unlikely to seek it out frequently withtwo, it also seems it would be a very good introduction to the gameand provides an environment to experiment with the tactics a littleless disruptively.

I continue to enjoy Goa a great deal. It's long, but worth it. Itappears there are several errors in the translation on the Geek, whencompared to the Rio Grande rules. I encourage those who've learnedthe rules by reading the rules on the Geek to check their Englishrules if they have them. A few specifics:

You can place the flag marker on any place on the edge or in any unoccupied square, so long as at least one tile is orthogonally adjacent.

When you draw expedition cards, you discard/play (playing at most one) down to your hand limit after you draw.

The expedition cards for getting to the fourth and fifth rows are awarded seperately for each column, allowing up to 10 to be awarded per game. (This is unclear even in the Rio Grande rules, and I have played it both ways)

With experienced players, the game is close to the 90 minute estimateand a lot of fun. It's a lot to keep in your head at once and I'mtempted to allow planning on paper next time I play.

Friday, June 11, 2004

It seems over the past year or so there has been a deluge of newonline games stores. I have ordered from a few of them, but for along time I ordered from href=http://funagain.com/cgi-bin/funagain/home?;;RGBR>Funagainprimarily. Their selection is essentially the best of the domesticonline sellers and their prices are usually competetive (plus, they doprice matching, if you're willing to deal with it). Recently though Ihave used Game Surplus for myorders and have been quite pleased. In addition to having outstandingprices and a selection that approaches Funagain's. Further, they arein Pennysylvania which means their shipping to Boston only takes 2days even via UPS ground, which is very nice, especially compared tothe sometimes substantial delays that shipping from Oregon (Funagain'shome) seemed to yield.

Both Game Surplus and Funagain have well done web sites and shoppingcart systems which used to more of a distinguishing characteristic.Additionally, both are responsive to special requests and questionsover email which makes it nice to do business with them.

Sunday, June 6, 2004

Ma Ni Ki!

by Dominique Erhard

Rating: A

This is a simultaneous puzzle solving game in the spirit of RicochetRobot, though the puzzle itself bears essentially no resemblance toRicochet Robot. The basic idea is you have three animals on twoplatforms and you are trying to change their configuration by issuingcommands like "Ma", which moves the bottom animal on one platform tothe top, or "Ni" which swaps the top two animals on the two platforms.As a result, the game is a race to shout out multi-syllable commandssuch as the eponymous "MaNiKi", or "LoNiMaSo" or the like.

The game is a blast, and the components are absolutely beautifulrectilinear wooden animals, along with cards showing the 24 possibletarget configurations. No individual puzzle is very hard, but thespeed element makes it appropriately challenging. My only concern isthat it may get a little repetetive after several plays.

The game suggests an "advanced" variant of excluding the "Ni" commandfrom the options. Another advanced variant that I expect to try isrequiring all solutions to be four syllalbles or fewer, with oneexception. If the current puzzle is a stack of 3 animals and the goalis to move that stack wholesale to the other platform, the shortestpossible command to do so is five syllables. All othertransformations are possible in four syllables, although some of themare subtle and a lot easier to find as five or six syllable commands.

Overall, a very entertaining and clever game. It also has theadvantage many puzzle games have of easily allowing a virtuallyunlimited number of players and easily allowing the introduction ofnew players mid-game. Highly recommended.

Friday, June 4, 2004

There's a lot of attempts to define and estimate the size of the boardgames market. Even many of the publishers don't have precise numbersbecause they sell their games to distributors and retailers and do notget sell-through numbers reliably through their customers. There area few obvious things that could be measured to try to measure the sizeof the market. The traditional way is to measure the total copies ordollars of a game sold or a similar number. These are interesting,but number of people is more interesting.

The question "How many board gamers are there?" is very specificallypredicated on the definition of a "board gamer". When I ask thequestion, I even more specifically mean German-style board gameplayer. So, I am excluding focused Go and Chess afficionados,ConSim/War game players and other people who could reasonably calledboard gamers. By this definition, I think the number is between 2,000and 80,000. If I had to go down to a specific number I'd say there'sabout 4,000 "serious gamers" and about 40,000 "casual gamers". Oneobvious way to try to measure this though is to measure total copiesof particular popular games that have been sole.

Presumably, if there are 100,000 copies of Carcassonne sold, there areroughly that many people who own a copy. Naturally, there's somefraction of those still in the distributor and retail channel.Further, there's some number of those copies that were never opened,never played, or played and abandoned. So, the total number of peoplewho actually play it with any regularity is somewhat lower. But, eventhe initial number is hard to obtain for any given game.

In an attempt to come up with at least approximate estimates, I tookto looking at the href=http://www.boardgamegeek.com>BoardGameGeek collections dataas a starting point. For a number of games, there's a known print runsize and it is known to be essentially completely distributed.Further, for man other games, print run/distributions sizes areapproximately known. Given this and the number of BGG collections agame appears in, it is possible to estimate the number of total ownersany given game has. This number will not be precise, but it seems tobe reasonably accurate, within about an order of magnitude. Overall,I estimate between 1 and 10% of most "German-style" games arereflected in the BGG collections for typical games. More "mainstream"games yield lower percentages and extreme niche games are higherpercentages. The table below shows some of the games I based thisestimate on.

Thursday, June 3, 2004

I recently found a problem on my mortgage statement caused due to asequence of errors by Chase, my bank and me. I called Chase customerservice to try to get it resolved and was appalled at the service Ireceived. The customer service representative was unhelpful,uninformed and rude. I asked that she have someone who could help mecall me back the next day.

Nobody called the next day, and I went to their web site and sent anemail inquiry, expecting that to go to into the black hole that isoften email support. A bit less than 48 hours later I received apolite, helpful, informative and apologetic email back explaining bothwhat they would do and what I needed to do in order to correct theproblem. I was shocked.

A couple weeks later, I checked back online and my online statementdid not seem to reflect the changes I expected it to. I sent anotheremail inquiry. Another 48 hours later and I got back anotherresponse, again politely apologetic, indicating the problem had indeedbeen resolved and their online system unfortunately did not alwaysreflect those changes promptly.

Today, I received both a paper statement and a hand signed letter fromChase indicating the problem had been resolved and apologizing for theconfusion. While I am still rather disturbed at their response when Icalled, the quality of their email support largely made up for it.Given that email support is probably an economical solution for themand at many levels a preferable solution to me, I'm pleased to knowthey are using it effectively and I'll naturally use it in preferenceto the phone in the future. I hope their poor quality phone serviceis not at all an intentional attempt to drive people to theeasier-to-manage email support.

In any case, if you have a customer service issue with Chase, skip thephone and send them an email.

Wednesday, June 2, 2004

Blosxom is nice. It made it very easy to add a "Recently PlayedGames" box to the sidebar of my blog. A little self-indulgent, butthat's what blogs are for, right? I also added a "Send me anote" form in the sidebar, but that's just HTML.

Friday, May 28, 2004

This blog uses blosxom, a relatively minimalistic blog systemimplemented in perl. I've played around with a few blogging systemsand have been fairly dissatisfied. I'm hoping blosxom will contradictthat experience. At various points in the past, I've used Squishdot,blogmax, and my own persona wiki modified for blogging.All were in varying degrees annoying to use, annoying to extend, andugly. Blosxom has some promise to be reasonable to use,straightforward to extend and acceptably attractive.

This blog uses a heavily modified layout derived from "href="http://www.blosxom.com/flavours/general/pureSqueezed.htm">pureSqueezed".The stuff in the righthand column is the find plugin, the categorytreeplugin, the morentries plugin and the calendar and archives plugins together.

Thursday, May 27, 2004

The nominees for Spiele des Jahres for this year came out a little while ago. They are:

Dawn Under (Dicke Luft in der Gruft)

Einfach Genial

Raja

Saint Petersburg

Zug um Zug (Ticket To Ride)

A lot of the online discussion seems to favor Ticket To Ride for thewin. Ticket To Ride is certainly a good game, but I'm not convincedthat isn't because it's the only of the list that's been widelyavailable in the US. I'm not convinced I have any special isnightinto the like selection of the Jury so instead I'll just comment onthe four out of five that I've played:

Dawn Under: This is a good memory game,especially beautifully produced, but I wouldn't give it any specialcredit. It's got a few interesting twists that make it a bit morethan simply a memory game. While I've played many memory games thatare more than kid's games, I would put this one squarely in thegood-with-children category.

Einfach Genial: This is a light, entertaining andapproachable multi-player abstract. I've only played it a few times,but it's been fairly universally well received. It seems like thereis room for deeper tactical play, but it also lends itself well to amore casual analysis. It also is very nicely produced.

Raja: Haven't played it yet.

Saint Petersburg: I've played this one several times nowand I'm no good at it. It doesn't feel especially novel, but themechanics go together very nicely. With only a few plays, it alreadyseems that there are several effective paths to victory, which bodeswell for the games continued value. Despite all that, I'm not surehow it will hold up in the long run, but it seems it will continue tobe enjoyed.

Ticket To Ride: I like Ticket To Ride, but I'm not ga-gaover it the way many people seem to be. It seems composed ofreasonably standard mechanics and lucky selection of route cards seemsit might overly dominate the game. Certainly it's no TransAmericakiller, as some have claimed. All that said, it's a good mediumweight game which is nicely designed.

Sunday, May 23, 2004

In general, I am a strong proponent of playing the rules as written. Most of the time, games have gone through extensive playtesting and there are reasons why the rules are in place. Introducing house rules more often than not reduces the quality of a game. Naturally, people should play however they find most enjoyable, but I'll be the first to admit it isn't always obvoius what is the "most enjoyable". All of that said, there's a few games where I've found a variant or house rule that substantially improves the experience. Some of these (for example, the Attika variant) are reasonably specific to my tastes. While I know several people who prefer my variant, others prefer the original rules. Others, such as the Vinci variant I haven't seen anyone prefer the original. So, on with the variants:

Vinci is an outstanding game, but it can have a bit of a serious engame problem. Specifically, it there is serious analysis paralysis as people maximize their score and minimize the score of the players who are doing well. This problem is completely and simply fixed by utilizing hidden scoring. At the end of a complete round, if one or more players have passed the winning point total, they announce so and the player with the highest score wins. I've played it many times this way and highly recommend it.

ZooSim has a rich-get-richer problem in that income is derived from the number of zoo tiles one. Naturally, this is somewhat offset by the fact that purchasers of the early tiles presumably pay dearly, but it's been my observation, even with experienced players, due to the blind nature of the bidding, it is hard to effectively force that payment and a player who wins two tiles in the first round is at a serious advantage. The variant I've played with that fixes this effectively is to have income simply be 3 units per round, regardless of zoo size.

I find the "connect two shrines" win condition dissatisfying. Additionally, I find it can turn into a game of chicken where other players try to avoid spending the resources to stop someone from achieving this condition, hoping their opponents will. Eliminating this victory condition reduces the amount of player interaction. After a few testing games, I've found that making the connection of two shrines grant that player 6 cards is effective. It's a substantial reward enough to try to connect, but not so much that it ends the game.

This isn't so much a variant as an interpretation of the rules. We now play with "passing by intent". What I mean by that is that as soon as you intend to pass and make any effort to do so, it is considered passed. That puts the onus on the receiving player to grab it and get on with their clue giving. It's also a lot less frustrating and essentially unambiguous which team gets the point when the buzzer goes. If you're in the process of passing it, it counts as in the next players hands.

Sunday, May 16, 2004

These are games that are new to me, with the newest at the top, alongwith whatever ultra-brief commentary I have on them. I periodicallyupdate this, but the post time will no longer change and it won't showup as new in RSSI fees.

Personal

Professional

I am a Engineering Director at Google. My team and I work on Search.

Previously, I was the CTO at an 802.11 location and security company, Newbury Networks in Boston. In June, 1999 I received my Masters degree from the MIT Media Lab. I graduated from MIT (undergraduate) in June, 1997, in physics. Prior to that I was CTO of net.Genesis from 1994 to 1996.